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Where the outrage is
It's all well and good to talk about how seriously horrible the photos from Abu Ghraib are playing in the Muslim world. Sunday's The New York Times provided a hint, however, that Christians are just as upset.

"In Abu Ghraib, the fact that a woman was there—and that one gender was being exposed naked to both genders—outraged not just Iraqis but everyone in the region, not just Muslims but Christians as well," Haverford College religion professor Michael A. Sells told the paper. "Certainly, a central aspect of the Qur'an is dignity and privacy. But where to draw the boundary between religion and culture? … People in the Middle East react with the same feeling of revulsion at these images that we have, but for them the images also connect powerfully to … the profound sense of being violated in other ways by American policies and American power."

But you don't have to be a Middle Easterner, either, to be outraged by the images and tales of torture and abuse.

Friday, the Vatican condemned the abuses in the harshest words. "Violence against persons offends God himself, who made human beings in his image and likeness," said Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, who works in the Vatican's Secretary of State office. Torture, Zenit News Service quotes him saying, is "contrary to the most elementary human rights and radically opposed to Christian morality. … The scandal is even more serious if one takes into account that those actions were committed by Christians."

An unsigned editorial in the Vatican's semi-official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, issues a similar condemnation. "In the abuses and ill treatment of prisoners is consummated the radical negation of man's dignity and his fundamental values," the paper said, according to Zenit.

The brutal offense against one's fellowman is the tragic antithesis of the basic principles of civilization and democracy. … In this disturbing scene, a speechless world questions itself, full of horror and shame. In particular, the people of the United States feel profoundly betrayed in their humanity and in their history when learning that torture—an affront against the human person—has been perpetrated under its flag, dishonoring it.

But the Vatican didn't stop at condemnation. Archbishop Lajolo issued at least a partial prescription: "Those responsible must be brought to justice and punished, as well as their immediate superior who failed in their important duty to restrain them."

American Christians may "feel profoundly betrayed in their humanity and in their history," but so far few prominent Christian leaders have spoken on the subject. Searches for "Abu Ghraib" at the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, American Family Association, and other such Christian public advocacy organizations turned up nothing.

One evangelical organization, however, is speaking on the subject, and proposes a prescription beyond that of Lajolo. It's not just the immediate supervisor who should be punished, says Sojourners, it's also the Secretary of Defense. "Donald Rumsfeld knew these crimes were taking place as early as last fall, but by his own admission failed to inform the President, Congress, and the public," an e-mail message to supporters says. "Such inaction and tolerance of human rights abuses is inexcusable. … If these abuses were systemic, we cannot trust that same system—including military police and intelligence officials, the CIA, and independent military contractors—to correct them." The e-mail message asks supporters to contact Congress "to demand Rumsfeld's resignation and an independent investigation."

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May (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48